


A Sense of Loss

by cruelest_month



Series: A Sense of Loss [1]
Category: Nathan Barley (TV)
Genre: Deaf Character, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-19
Updated: 2012-02-19
Packaged: 2017-10-31 10:09:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/342833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cruelest_month/pseuds/cruelest_month
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jones goes deaf, and Dan plans to cope by ignoring him. Claire, as per usual, intervenes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Sense of Loss

The whole trip to the A&E and the entire way back, Jones' head remained in her lap and Claire brushed her fingers through his hair. She felt miserable and helpless, but realized, of course, that how she felt was nothing compared to how he had to have been feeling. And she had a hard time keeping to only one or two emotions when she was so angry at the situation and absolutely furious with Dan.

How could this be permanent? It was horribly unfair and surprising and unexpected and wrong. And yet she imagined that constant exposure to loud, obnoxious sounds made this sort of thing inevitable.

She kept looking up front to the passenger's seat. She kept waiting for Dan to say something. Anything. Maybe he just couldn't see the point when Jones wouldn't have been able to hear it anyway, but a gesture of any kind would have gone a long way. Instead, she'd had to be the only one providing any physical comfort. The hand holding. The hugging. The shoulder squeezing. The gentle steering whenever he paused in the hallway to look around, mystified somehow and lost. She didn't think it was really working and she knew that nothing she did was going to make any real difference.

Once they'd gone back to the cab, Jones had buried his face against her thigh. Even when she'd taken her jacket off and wrapped it around his narrows shoulders, he kept right on shivering.

"I hate you," she said to Dan when he opened the door for her and Jones. She hit him in the shoulder as he handed a small pathetic handful of bills to the taxi driver and Jones ended up pulling her away, up to the front door of the house.

Dan didn't say anything as he followed them up the steps. Just stuck a cigarette in his mouth and waited for her to open the door.

"What's wrong with you?" she asked, grabbing as his jacket, but Dan shrugged her off and went into the kitchen. "Say something, you stupid selfish bastard!"

But he didn't even look back and if she could have found something to throw at him, she would have. What was he thinking about? Was he upset about Jones' condition? Mad that he'd slept through what had caused the permanent damage? Was he just off venting his own frustrations and feeling sorry for himself because his meal ticket wasn't going to be able to perform again any time soon?

"Claire," Jones said in such an uncertain, plaintive tone of voice that she almost didn't recognize it as his. But then he was making sounds without hearing them and that wasn't something he was used to. There was a rough, ragged quality to it like he was trying not cry, and she didn't understand why until he started wiping at the corner of her eye. "I can't... do this," he added, moving his hand away and slouching slightly.

She wiped at her face and gently tugged him over to the couch, turning on some lights and looking for something to write with. She eventually sat down beside him once she'd found a pad of construction paper and a biro.

"You can. I'll help you," she wrote and said out loud all at once.

"I can't..." He gestured and shook his head.

"We'll buy lots of paper. We'll learn sign language." They could sign up for an online class on BSL. She'd collected and examined the pamphlets herself when all Dan had been able to do was stare down at them.

"But I can't do anything now."

Something banged and then broke in the kitchen. She was careful to flinch while staring down at the paper. "That's not true. At all."

Jones looked around for a bit, slowly glancing at his turn tables and all of his equipment before eying the kitchen. He looked so sad that she had to bite her lip to keep from leaving the room. "Dan?" She couldn't think of anything to write even when the DJ nudged her fingers with his. "Is he mad at me?"

"No," she wrote, hoping it wasn't a lie. "He's just a berk."

After reading that, he offered up a ghost of a smile before curling up on the other end of the couch. She watched him for a little while before getting to her feet and brushing her fingers over his forehead. He didn't stir and she wasn't surprised. Jones had always had a gift for passing out in five seconds or less.

She put the pad and biro on a table and stared hard at the threshold leading into the kitchen. Just as she was about to head towards it, Dan came out with the same unlit cigarette clenched between his teeth. He tucked it into the pocket of his shirt and didn't seem pleased to see her standing there. He looked even less pleased that Jones was curled up on the couch he tended to like sleeping on.

And even though Jones couldn't have heard them, Claire yanked hard on Dan's arm and steered him into the hallway leading towards the bedrooms. "What're you doing?"

"Going to bed."

"That's what you think," she practically growled, trying to slam him against the wall but he just lightly shoved her away before crossing his arms. "Christ, Dan. You haven't said more than three words since we got back."

"What's there to say, Claire? He's fucked and nothing can be done about it."

"Yeah, but he's not dead. He hasn't changed. He hasn't done anything wrong. He just can't hear and you're acting like he doesn't exist."

"I don't like sick people. I don't like being around them."

Which in Dan-speak probably meant he was out of his depth and knew it. He was a shirker of responsibility and it had always irritated her. It irked her even more at that particular moment because she thought that even the biggest self-centered loser would have made more of an effort to at least try to be a halfway decent mate to Jones than her brother.

Claire's expression hardened. "He's not sick."

"He's deaf, Claire. He's never going to hear anything again."

She barked out a wry, bitter laugh and shook her head. "Oh, well, good thing you told me. I never would have noticed. So what's your plan? We'll just ignore him and hope he goes away?"

"You're looking after him."

"It's not what I want to do."

"Same here."

God, they were so fucking selfish, weren't they? Claire rubbed at her forehead and sighed. "Doesn’t matter though, does it? We still have to help him and look after him. I mean, we have to, Dan. You're his only real friend and he doesn't have any family."

"There's probably a place he could go," Dan mused.

"What? A retirement home for twenty-something deaf musicians?"

He grimaced and clenched his jaw slightly before clearing his throat. "Well, we both can't watch him."

"Why not? If this happened to you, he’d help you and you know it, Dan."

He snorted. "Why not? Look at us, Claire. Look at me. I doubt I could take care of anyone. I don't want to take up BS...L. What sort of name is that for a language anyway?"

"You stupid..." She trailed off, not seeing the point in pointing out what seemed obvious. So she pointed out what Dan seemed perfectly content to overlook. "What about Jones? What about what this is doing to him?"

Dan didn't say anything and stared at the carpet.

"I see. Right. How dare he lose his hearing and inconvenience you. You know what, Dan? Fine."

He looked up.

"You don't have to help. You don't have to learn to do anything for anyone else. But before you fuck off, you're going to tell him why. Because I honestly don't have it in me to explain why it is that the second he stopped being able to hear, you stopped considering him to be anything but a burden."

He looked down again.

"And you’ll be all alone then." And as he stared at her, blinking uncertainly, she continued, smirking briefly in a particular vicious manner. "That's right. I'm not living here and he's not going to live here with you. We'll stay with Nathan until I find a flat and a better job."

"You can't take him over there."

"Why can't I?"

"Because. He won't want to be there."

"You want to put him in a home!"

"No, that's not what I meant. It's just there must be a place where he'll get--"

"It won't matter. You don't want to help him. You don't want to learn BSL. At least Nathan will be nice to him. Nathan might even encourage him to keep on DJing." And he probably would have done. She made a mental note to see what his reaction would be, but she thought it was more than likely that Nathan would think the idea of a deaf DJ was well weapon. "Pingu would be nice to him."

"You can't take him over there. Not with that fucking lunatic. Look at how he treats Pingu. He'll--"

"But you don't care, Dan. You don't care what happens to him."

"That's not..." He mumbled something.

"Not what? Not true?" she asked, trying to get a good look at Dan's face, but he kept turning away and the hall wasn't very well-lit. "Why don't you try making eye contact with me every once in awhile?"

"Look, we'll... I was wrong about..."

"You've definitely gone wrong."

"You wouldn't really..."

"Take him over there if you continue to act like this? Don't think I won't," she firmly replied. "It might be better for Jones. Nathan wouldn't hurt him. Not the way you are."

Dan glared at her sharply. He probably couldn't stand the thought of Nathan being more sympathetic to Jones' plight. The severe expression lightened slightly as he rubbed at the back of his neck and sighed audibly.

"No one deserves to be abandoned for losing their hearing, Dan. He's your friend. He's just my flatmate, but I do like him and so I'm willing to help. He's handling it better than you're handling him losing it. That's not fair to him, and if you can't be bothered to at least be there for him because you're too worried about how we're going to pay the bloody rent then I'm--"

"No, we'll manage," Dan muttered, brushing past her and going back into the living room. "You're not taking him to Barley's."

Jones wasn't be too difficult to wake up after all the hospital coffee he'd had and the lack of pills of any kind in his system. He looked a little worried as he glanced up at them. "Alright, Dan," he murmured, rubbing at his eyes and moving closer to Dan who looked like he was chanting some silent mantra about not letting Jones go to Nathan's in order to keep himself from walking or running away.

Claire thrust the pad and biro into Dan's hands, prodding at his shoulder until he started writing. Neither one of them were paying much attention to her so she went off to get ready for bed. She sent Nathan a text message, not explaining every aspect of the situation, but explaining that things were... No, they weren't alright. But things had been sorted out. When she finally went into the kitchen to make herself some tea, they were both curled up on the same couch and she breathed out a sigh of relief. It was a start, at least.


End file.
